While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

Doing Practical Ethics supports the deliberate practice of philosophical skills relevant to understanding, evaluating, and developing arguments in forms commonly used in the field of practical ethics. Each chapter includes an explanation of a specific moral reasoning skill, demonstration exercises with sample solutions that offer students immediate feedback on their initial practice attempts, and extensive sets of practice exercises. It is suitable for any ethics course that centrally features argument from principle, argument from analogy, or (...) inference to the best explanation. It may be used as a standalone text in a debate-focused course. Paired with an anthology in a readings-focused course, it will help students develop the skills they need to understand and evaluate the arguments in the assigned readings. (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application can (...) serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that ‘good care’ in residential nursing homes is enacted through different care practices that are either inspired by a ‘professional logic of care’ that aims for justice and non-maleficence in the professional treatment of residents, or by a ‘relational logic of care’, which attends to the relational quality and the meaning of interpersonal connectedness in people’s lives. Rather than favoring one care logic over the other, this paper indicates how important aspects of care are constantly (...) negotiated between different care practices. Based on the intricate everyday negotiations observed during an ethnographic field study at an elderly nursing home in Germany, the paper puts forth the argument that care is always a matter of tinkering with different, sometimes competing ‘goods’. This tinkering process, which unfolds through ‘intuitive deliberation’, ‘situated assessment’ and ‘affective juggling’ is then theorized along the conceptualization of a ‘practical ethics of care’: an ethics which makes no a priori judgments of what may be considered as good or bad care, but instead calls for momentary judgments that are pliable across changing situations. (shrink)

Practical Ethics in Architecture and Interior Design Practice presents the basics of design practice through ethical scenarios, ushering design students into real-world experiential learning. Each chapter begins with a detailed story involving a complicated set of practical and ethical dilemmas, exemplifying those encountered each day in the world of professional practice. Practice-based topics such as contracts and project delivery methods, marketing design services, cross-cultural collaboration, virtual connectivity, social justice and sustainable design, soft skills, and other related professional (...) practice themes are anchored in realistic scenarios. While all the stories are fictional, in writing them the authors drew from over 75 combined years of professional experience in architecture and interior design, as well as many years of academic experience in teaching professional practice and ethics to architecture and interior design students. Each story is followed by discussion questions and suggested additional resources. This book provides a unique integrated perspective into the allied fields of architecture and interior design with topics relevant to both fields as well as specific to each profession. It prepares students of both disciplines for the broad issues of professional practice and encourages them to become ethical practitioners ready to contribute effectively to design teams and to ask the right questions. (shrink)

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively (...) reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live. (shrink)

This article probes the practical ethical implications of AI system design by reconsidering the important topic of bias in the datasets used to train autonomous intelligent systems. The discussion draws on recent work concerning behaviour-guiding technologies, and it adopts a cautious form of technological utopianism by assuming it is potentially beneficial for society at large if AI systems are designed to be comparatively free from the biases that characterise human behaviour. However, the argument presented here critiques the common well-intentioned (...) requirement that, in order to achieve this, all such datasets must be debiased prior to training. By focusing specifically on gender-bias in Neural Machine Translation systems, three automated strategies for the removal of bias are considered – downsampling, upsampling, and counterfactual augmentation – and it is shown that systems trained on datasets debiased using these approaches all achieve general translation performance that is much worse than a baseline system. In addition, most of them also achieve worse performance in relation to metrics that quantify the degree of gender bias in the system outputs. By contrast, it is shown that the technique of domain adaptation can be effectively deployed to debias existing NMT systems after they have been fully trained. This enables them to produce translations that are quantitatively far less biased when analysed using gender-based metrics, but which also achieve state-of-the-art general performance. It is hoped that the discussion presented here will reinvigorate ongoing debates about how and why bias can be most effectively reduced in state-of-the-art AI systems. (shrink)

Let a great Tibetan scholar guide you through one of Nagarjuna’s masterworks. In Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness Khensur Jampa Tegchok walks us carefully through a classic of Indian Buddhist philosophy, explaining the implications of its philosophical arguments and grounding its advice in a recognizable day-to-day world. In Precious Garland, the source text for this commentary, Nagarjuna advises his patron king on how best to take advantage of human life to secure a happy rebirth in the next life (...) while making progress toward the goal of enlightenment. Known primarily for his incisive presentation of emptiness, here Nagarjuna shows his wise understanding of how to navigate the intricacies of worldly life to balance everyday needs with spiritual practice. Loaded with equal measures of penetrating explanations of the highest reality and inspiring encouragement towards the bodhisattva practices, Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness makes the case for living a thoughtful, morally upright life in the world to achieve immediate and ultimate spiritual goals. (shrink)

This chapter sketches a broad history of practical ethics. It identifies five distinguishable styles of work in practical ethics: the Vertical Approach, the Horizontal Approach, Analysis and Intuition, Reasoning From Middle-Level Principles, and the Case Approach. It is argued that practical ethics is today a glorious mess, as evidenced by the different philosophical views implied by the different approaches. Some philosophers also practice more than one of these styles, sometimes in the same paper, which (...) helps to explain the tension between practical ethics and the discipline of philosophy. If people working in this field cannot agree about what they are doing, then it is difficult to locate this field on a map of the discipline. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the limited efficacy procedural ethics has for qualitative research. Ethics committee's instructions have a short shelf life given the research question qualitative researchers create is volatile; that is, likely to change due to the inductive, emergent, informant-led nature of qualitative research. Design-This article draws on extensive literature to examine the void between the original research design and the messy reality experienced in the field. We focus on how researchers can practice ethically by recognizing the need (...) for agile and responsive ethics praxis in their work. Findings-This practice describes the researcher, recognizing the initial support from an ethics committee and its limitations, but as the research gets underway assuming full responsibility for ethical considerations that emerge in the field. Practical implications-Researchers' responsibilities entail recognising the dual …. (shrink)

Introduction to ABA, ethics, and core ethical principles -- Contextual factors that influence ethical decision-making -- Creating behavioral systems to support ethical behavior in autism treatment -- Identifying your scope of competence in autism treatment -- The decision-making process of evidence-based practice -- Interdisciplinary collaboration -- Common errors and mistakes made during ethical analyses and application.

Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has long been one of the most popular ethics texts, and this should come as no surprise. Singer's clear prose, logical arguments, and controversial conclusions have...

Public debates on linguistic integration as a socially desired outcome often share a prevailing sentiment that newcomers ought to “learn the language.” But the intensity of that sentiment is rarely accompanied by an equally robust understanding of what, precisely, it means in practice. This results in a notion of linguistic integration with an inbuilt tension between a seemingly pragmatic and commonsensical appearance, on the one hand, and a minimal action‐guidance capacity, on the other hand. This paper explores this intriguing tension, (...) and it identifies three moral and practical challenges that this challenge presents to the normative theorizing of the practical ethics of linguistic integration: (1) a predicament of arbitrary treatment; (2) the interpersonal structure of social and linguistic learning; and (3) the affective dimension of linguistic integration. (shrink)

In his Precious Garland, a classic of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Nagarjuna advises a king on how best to secure a happy rebirth while making progress toward the ultimate goal of enlightenment. In Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness, Khensur Jampa Tegchok walks us through the Precious Garland, drawing out the implications of its arguments and grounding its advice in our world today, with equal measures of penetrating explanation and inspiring encouragement.

In environmental ethics, there has been too little attention to the question of why changes in environmental beliefs do not simply result in changes in behavior, given that this gap between belief and behavior is widespread. In this essay, I argue that two forms of inaction that exhibit this gap can be helpfully analyzed by reading them in terms of a Lutheran account of sin. To make the argument, I distinguish seven forms of and reasons for inaction, from which (...) I pull out two “privileged” forms of inaction that characterize people who could act and yet do not. Using psychological and sociological research, I interpret these two forms of inaction as, on the one hand, people’s attempts at securing righteousness and, on the other hand, people’s terrorized consciences in response to the complexity and gravity of climate change. I end suggesting a turn to justification within Christian environmental ethics. (shrink)

Pedagogy, power and practice ethics: clinical teaching in psychiatric/mental health settings Often, baccalaureate nursing students initially approach a psychiatric mental health practicum with uncertainty, and even fear. They may feel unprepared for the myriad complex practice situations encountered. In addition, memories of personal painful life events may be vicariously evoked through learning about and listening to the experiences of those diagnosed with mental disorders. When faced with such challenging situations, nursing students often seek counsel from the clinical and/or classroom (...) faculty. Pedagogic boundaries may begin to blur in the face of student distress. For the nurse educator, several questions arise: Should a nurse educator provide counseling to students? How does one best negotiate the boundaries between ‘counselor’, and ‘caring educator’? What are the limits of a caring and professional pedagogic relation? What different knowledges provide guidance and to what differential consequences for ethical pedagogic relationships? This paper offers a comparative analysis of three philosophical stances to examine differences in key assumptions, pedagogic positioning, relationships of power/knowledge, and consequences for professional ethical pedagogic practices. While definitive answers are difficult, the authors pose several questions for consideration in discerning how best to proceed and under what particular conditions. (shrink)

A drug overdose epidemic in North America has sped the expansion of harm reduction services. Drawing on fieldwork in Ottawa, Ontario, we examine forms of care among people offering and accessing these resources. Notably, our interlocutors do not always characterize harm reduction as caring for oneself. Thus, we differentiate between the ethics of care through which one enters desired subject positions, and anethical careful practices. Harm reduction is sometimes anethical, enacted through minor gestures that do not constitute ethical work (...) but allow for its future realization. Une épidémie d’overdose de drogue en Amérique du Nord a accéléré l’expansion des services de réduction des risques. En s’appuyant sur un travail de terrain à Ottawa, Ontario, nous examinons les formes de souci et soin parmi les personnes qui fournissent ces ressources et qui y ont accès. Tout particulièrement, nos interlocuteurs ne caractérisent pas toujours la réduction des risques comme le souci de soi. Ainsi, nous faisons la différence entre l’éthique du souci de soi et des soins par laquelle on entre dans les positions de sujets souhaitées, et les pratiques soignantes anéthiques. La réduction des risques est parfois anéthique, mise en œuvre par des gestes mineurs qui ne constituent pas un travail éthique mais permettent sa réalisation future. (shrink)

Psychotherapy holds out the promise of help for people who are hurting and in need. It can save lives and change lives. In therapy, clients can find their strengths and sense of hope. They can change course toward a more meaningful and healthy life. They can confront loss, tragedy, hopelessness, and the end of life in ways that do not leave them numb or paralyzed. They can discover what brings them joy and what sustains them through hard times. They can (...) begin to trust, or to trust more wisely. They can learn new behaviors in therapy and how to teach themselves new behaviors after therapy ends. They can question what they always believed was a given. They can find out what matters most to them, and how to stop wasting time. They can become happier, or at least less miserable. They can become better able, as Freud noted, to love and to work. They can learn how to accept and love themselves just as they are and accept others who are different from them. Our ethics acknowledge and affirm our profession's responsibilities. This book was written to help strengthen, deepen, and inform ethical awareness and the sense of personal ethical responsibility. Its job is to help you hold onto the ideals-including ethical ideals-that called you into the profession to begin with, to help you develop and fulfill those ideals. There will be so much-trust us on this-that tends to dull ethical awareness, to make ethics drift out of focus, to create barriers between you and your ideals, to replace ethics with pseudo-ethics and ethics placebos. Fatigue, endless paperwork, unrealistic expectations, illness, family crises, not being able to make ends meet, burn out, threats of job loss, insurance coverage that doesn't come close to meeting the needs of our clients, biases that have not been addressed, and so many other forces can pressure us into cutting ethical corners. This book is intended to help you develop a strong and healthy resistance to such forces, to help you weather them without losing your ethical awareness and ideals. (shrink)

세계화 시대 인권의 보편성이 강조되면서 한 나라의 국제 경쟁력은 인권 분야의 경쟁력 강화와 밀접한 관련을 갖는다. 한 국가의 정치적 지향성에 따라 인권개념은 상이하게 받아들여진다. 한국의 근현대사에서 많은 사람들이 인권 보호와민주화 실현을 위해 헌신했다. 함석헌은 민중의 인권, 자유 그리고 민주화를 위해노력한 인권운동가로 그의 실천사상은 씨 사상 으로 대변된다. 함석헌은 자신의 인권이 소중한 만큼 타자의 인권도 소중하다는 생각을 강조했으며 인권을 지키기 위해 훈련이 필요하다고 역설했다. 그에게 있어 민중은 씨이다. 씨은 필요 이상의 지나친 소유도 권력도 지위도 없는 맨 사람이다. 자유와평등의 도덕적 존재이자 살아 (...) 있는 유기체로서 사람을 존중해야 한다. 교육의 측면에서 씨인 민중을 사실에 기초하여 사색하고 생각하게 하는 것이 교육의 주요한역할이다. 씨사 상 은 첫째, 씨인 민중은 고귀하다. 둘째, 민중은 역사와 나라의주체이다. 셋째, 민중은 새롭게 자기 주체에 대한 본연의 탐구를 해야 한다. 넷째, 씨의 양심을 키우게 하라. 다섯째, 교육에 있어 인격도야가 앞서야 한다. 마지막으로 사실을 바탕으로 씨의 생각함의 힘을 키우게 한다는 것 등을 제시한다. ‘생각하는 백성이라야 산다.’는 그의 말처럼 민중을 스스로 깨어나도록 돕고 인간의 존엄성을 인식하는 것이 민중을 위한 교육이자 인권교육이라 할 수 있다. 씨 사상 을 염두에 둔 인권교육은 인간 존재가 모두 고귀한 씨임을 인식하고 주체적 인격체가 되게 하는 것으로 2015개정 교육과정의 중학교 과 고등학교 인권 관련 단원을 통해 녹여낼 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

항상성 피드백 과정을 통해 녹색불교는 유기체와 자아 정체성을 유지하며 에너지 대사 과정을 통해 상호의존적인 상생의 실천적인 도덕원리를 표방한다. 아울러 생물종과 생태계를 중시하는 녹색불교의 실천지향에서는 ‘인간방어 원리’와 ‘인간보존 원리’의 균등 추구와 ‘불균등의 원리’의 제기 가능성에 대해 다양하면서 지혜로운 대처방안을 모색한다. 그런데 이러한 녹색불교의 전통에서는 ‘인간방어 원리’나 ‘인간보존 원리’의 중요성을 간과함으로 말미암아 인간이 희생시킨 생명체의 가치를 과소평가하는 경향도 나타났다. 따라서 인간과 동물의 연기(緣起) 측면뿐만 아니라 인간의 반야(般若)성취 가능성을 고려할 때, 방편보다 반야를 중시하는 전통불교의 위계가치를 배제시켜서는 아니 된다. 아울러 ‘불균등의 원리’의 중요성을 제대로 (...) 파악하여 인간이 생명세계에서 주도하는 생명살상과 상해의 양을 상황윤리 관점에서 과소평가하는 모순 또한 극복해야 한다. 이 글에서 우리는 녹색불교의 실천윤리를 고려하면서, 인간과 자연의 상관관계의 균형회복에 그 주안점을 두고자 한다.전통불교 사유체계와 녹색불교의 사유체계의 차이점을 비교하면서, 우리는 생태윤리 중시의 녹색불교에서 무엇보다도 전통적 반야추구에 대한 전통가치를 다시 살려낼 필요성을 규찰하고자 한다. 실제적으로 녹색불교에서는 억압으로부터 인간 해방의 가치를 내세움으로써 전통불교의 방편적 상호연기는 강조하였지만, 수행이나 윤리적 덕성함양에 따른 내면적 자기성찰은 홀대한 것이 사실로 확인되었다. 이에 따라 이 글에서는 반야추구의 수직의 자기계발의 가치를 훼손하지 않는 범위에서 오늘날 논의되는 생태공경 가치의 실천적 접목이 요청됨을 검증하고자 한다. 녹색불교 실천윤리에서는 수평의 연기를 강조하되 실천적 법륜인식에 있어서 반야에 근거한 실천가능성을 스스로 약화시킨 점을 깊이 성찰해야 된다. 이를 통해 탐욕과 미망에 사로잡혀 생태파괴를 일삼는 현대문화상황을 제대로 인식하여 그 근본적 개선점을 가져올 필요가 제기된다. 윤리적이며 명상적 전통을 계승하면서 삼라만상과 의존관계에 있음을 방편적 통찰이 조화롭게 유기체를 이루어야 될 것이다. 따라서 녹색불교는 상호의존을 강조하는 방편의 수평축에 매달리기보다 반야를 중시하는 전통불교의 실천 가치를 성찰함으로써 윤리적 감수성을 높일 수 있는 실천방법을 강구할 필요가 있다. 아울러 인성교육의 측면에서 명상자각 단계를 포괄적이며 체계적인 프로그램으로 활용하여 생태파괴의 인간욕망에 대한 제어기제로 확충시켜 나가야 된다. 그렇지 않으면 현대의 녹색불교는 서구의 생명 중심, 심층생태 윤리의식에 편중되어 의식각성과 변형의 수직적 패러다임의 전통불교 가치를 점차로 제거시켜 나가는 결과를 초래할 것이다. 이처럼 녹색불교의 실천지향에서는 방편전략과 반야전략의 두 바퀴를 함께 움직여서 ‘지속가능한 생태계(sustainable ecosystem)’를 살려 나가야 하며, 최근 중국으로부터의 분리를 주장하는 티베트(西藏)의 독립시위가 전 세계로 번지는데, 수도 라싸(拉薩)의 20년만의 최악의 유혈 폭력시위는 반야의 지혜방향으로 제대로 매듭 지워져야 될 것이다. (shrink)

본고는 황해도굿과 무속공동체를 중심으로 하여 행위주체 간의 관계에서 보여지는 실천윤리를 살펴보았다. 실천윤리란 인간행위의 실천영역에서 제기되는 윤리적 현상으로 무속에도 올바른 도리라고 생각되는 행위방식이 있다. 무속의 실천윤리는 경신(敬神)에서 비롯된다. 무속의례와 무속공동체의 실천윤리에는 개성존중, 해원, 조화와 평등성, 의례를 봉헌하는 도리, 섬김의 윤리, 근신의 윤리, 호혜성과 같은 윤리성이 도출된다. 이것은 다신관, 애니미즘, 조상숭배사상, 생명존중사상, 조화와 평등사상, 효사상을 근거로 하고 있다. 무속의 실천윤리는 인간사회 어디에서나 행해지는 일반적인 윤리․도덕이 그대로 투영되는 부분이 있는가 하면 무당의 종교체험, 무속공동체를 통해 전승되는 지식 등이 결부되어 나타나는 무속공동체만의 특성도 있다. 이러한 (...) 무속의 윤리는 무속의 본질을 이해하는 데 도움이 된다. 또한 환경윤리와 생명윤리가 요구되고 인간소외, 가족해체, 각종 갈등이 증대되고 있는 현대사회에서 우리는 무속을 통해 지혜를 얻을 수 있다. (shrink)

This book is intended to be used as an addendum to a more comprehensive text associated with the Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice training required by the Council for the Accreditation of Counselling and Related Education Programs (CACREP, F.1. a - m.). The goal of this text is to provide - as stated in the title - practical examples of managing ethical concerns for practicing counselors and counselors in training. Much has been made of the science to service (...) problem in counseling (Murray, 2009), with the consensus being that there is a gap between the academics writing the books and papers and the clinicians actually doing the work. This text is an effort to meet the needs of both by providing an overview of case examples that are relatable and accessible; and responses to these cases that meet the careful scrutiny required by the ACA. (shrink)

This article is about a virtue ethical approach to the professional ethics of teaching, centred around the ideal of _phronesis_ (practical wisdom) in an Aristotelian sense. It is grounded empirically in extensive research conducted at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues into teachers and other UK professionals, and it is grounded theoretically in recent efforts to revive an Aristotelian concept of _phronesis_ as excellence in ethical decision-making. The article argues for the need for a virtue-based approach to (...) professional practice, based on time-honoured Aristotelian assumptions and culminating in a conceptually viable construct of _phronesis_ as a psycho-moral integrator and adjudicator. After setting some of the historical background in Sect. 1, Sect. 2 charts the most relevant empirical findings. Section 3 introduces a call for _phronesis_ as a guide to virtue-based professional ethics: its role, nature, and methods of instruction. Section 4 adds some caveats and concerns about if and how _phronesis_ can be cultivated as part of teacher training. Finally, Sect. 5 offers some concluding remarks about the novelty and radicality of the approach on offer in this article. (shrink)

A SKETCH OF THE MORAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY Introduction Ethics is generally denned as the theoretic study of human morality; but the word is also used to cover the scheme of behaviour approved by a community or civilization and ...

This scathing critique of global consumerism argues that Japan's future success requires its citizens to uphold traditional family values, to create new environmentally sustainable patterns in their daily lives, and to reverse Western-influenced trends to exemplify proper ethical behaviour.

The philosophical method is critical to ethics consulting. To be truly effective, ethicists need grounding in ethics theory, abstract reasoning and conceptual analysis. A Practical Guide to Clinical Ethics Consulting allows ethicists to understand problems from practitioners' points-of-view, and allows for a genuine appreciation of the working life of practitioners.

Sidgwick claimed Kant as one of his moral philosophical masters. This did not prevent Sidgwick from registering pointed criticisms of most of Kant’s main claims in ethics. This paper explores the practical ethics of Sidgwick and Kant. In § I, I outline the element of Kant’s theoretical ethics that Sidgwick endorsed. In §§ II and III, I outline and adjudicate some of their sharpest disagreements in practical ethics, on the permissibility of lying and on (...) the demands of beneficence. In § IV, I argue that compared to Kant, Sidgwick has a better strategy for overcoming disagreement in practical ethics. §V sums things up. (shrink)

Throughout the Global North, policymakers invest in large-scale integration of health-data infrastructures to facilitate the reuse of clinical data for administration, research, and innovation. Debates about the ethical implications of data repurposing have focused extensively on issues of patient autonomy and privacy. We suggest that it is time to scrutinize also how the everyday work of healthcare staff is affected by political ambitions of data reuse for an increasing number of purposes, and how different purposes are prioritized. Our analysis builds (...) on ethnographic studies within the Danish healthcare system, which is internationally known for its high degree of digitalization and well-connected data infrastructures. Although data repurposing ought to be relatively seamless in this context, we demonstrate how it involves costs and trade-offs for those who produce and use health data. Even when IT systems and automation strategies are introduced to enhance efficiency and reduce data work, they can end up generating new forms of data work and fragmentation of clinically relevant information. We identify five types of data work related to the production, completion, validation, sorting, and recontextualization of health data. Each of these requires medical expertise and clinical resources. We propose that the implications for these forms of data work should be considered early in the planning stages of initiatives for large-scale data sharing and reuse, such as the European Health Data Space. We believe that political awareness of clinical costs and trade-offs related to such data work can provide better and more informed decisions about data repurposing. (shrink)

This article begins by examining James Beattie's conception of speculative ethics, which he regards as the study of the foundation and nature of virtue. This leads to a discussion of the moral sense, or conscience, which Beattie claims is part of the nature of every rational being and which is designed to lead us to a virtuous life. Given this, I ask why Beattie thought himself warranted, or even needed, to dispense practical ethical advice. Answering this involves looking (...) at Beattie's views on the importance of proper education, as well as the role played by his acceptance of providential naturalism. Beattie's answer is not only consistent with his ‘lecturing others’ as to their practical duties, his understanding of the relation between the speculative and the practical also allows him to respond to what contemporary ethicists call the Application Problem. A comparison with Reid's ethical thought will help bring out this latter point. (shrink)

This essay concerns itself with the methodology of practical ethics. There are a variety of methods employed in ethics. Although none have been firmly established as dominant, it is generally agreed that casuistry, or the case-based method, is one important strategy commonly used for resolving ethical issues. Casuists compare the case under consideration to a relevantly similar precedent case in which judgements have already been made, and they use these earlier judgements to determine the proper resolution of (...) the present case. In this article, I try to provide a better understanding of the nature of contemporary casuistry. To accomplish this, I explain the basic features of casuistic reasoning. The second section focuses on the logic of casuistry. By assessing casuistic reasoning from the logical viewpoint, casuistry can be reconstructed as a logically correct method of reasoning. The third section looks at casuistry from the epistemic point of view and investigates the justificatory force of casuistic reasoning. Finally, in the fourth section, I show the usefulness of formal casuistry. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have claimed that we should take not just empirical uncertainty but also fundamental moral uncertainty into account in our decision-making, and that, despite widespread moral disagreement, doing so would allow us to draw robust lessons for some issues in practical ethics. In this article, I argue that, so far, the implications for practical ethics have been drawn too simplistically. First, the implications of moral uncertainty for normative ethics are far more wide-ranging (...) than has been noted so far. Second, one can't straightforwardly argue from moral uncertainty to particular conclusions in practical ethics, both because of ‘interaction’ effects between moral issues, and because of the variety of different possible intertheoretic comparisons that one can reasonably endorse. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aristotelian practical wisdom (phronêsis) is a state of conviction (pistis) in the goodness of our goals based on proper grounds. This state of conviction can only be achieved if rational arguments and principles agree with how things appear to us. Since, for Aristotle, passions influence appearances, they can support or undermine our conviction in the goodness of ends that are worth pursuing. For this reason, we cannot be practically wise without virtuous dispositions to experience appropriate (...) passions. Along the way, I argue that this reading allows us to explain the shortcomings of self-controlled and akratic agents. -/- . (shrink)

This book, which transcends the boundaries between literature, social history, and philosophy, studies Plutarch's practical ethics, a group of twenty-odd texts ...

The traditional exposition of Kantian ethical theory in the business ethics literature is abstract, esoteric, and impractical compared to the more usable presentations of utilitarianism. This situation can be improved by identifying and describing the conceptual dimensions of formalistic ethical reasoning, as contained in the interplay between case and principle, with examples from the business/society literature.

Stokes, Patrick The announcement that Woolworths will phase out the selling of cage eggs seems like pretty good news.

Aristotle on Practical Wisdom is the first full-scale commentary on Nicomachean Ethics VI to be issued in a century, and the most illuminating ever. A meticulous translation with facing-page analysis enables readers to engage directly with Aristotle's account, while the lucid introduction locates it in the context of his—and later—ethical thought.

Developing a care plan in a critical care context can be challenging when the therapeutic alliance between clinicians and families is compromised by anger. When these cases occur, clinicians often turn to clinical ethics consultants to assist them with repairing this alliance before further damage can occur. This paper describes five different reasons family members may feel and express anger and offers concrete strategies for clinical ethics consultants to use when working with angry families acting as surrogate decision (...) makers for critical care patients. We reviewed records of consults using thematic analysis between January 2015 and June 2016. Each case was coded to identify whether the case involved a negative encounter with an angry family. In our review, we selected 11 cases with at least one of the following concerns or reasons for anger: perceived or actual medical error, concerns about the medical team’s competence, miscommunication, perceived conflict of interest or commitment, or loss of control. To successfully implement these strategies, clinical ethics consultants, members of the medical team, and family members should share responsibility for creating a mutually respectful relationship. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction The Physician and the Provider Organization The Physician and the Payer Organization Dealing with Systems Conclusion Notes References.

Abstract Drawing on the features of “practical philosophy” described by Toulmin ( 1990 ), a “practical” ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for (...) example by cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat destruction and climate change. The four types of activities raise different ethical concerns including suffering, injury, deprivation, and death (of individuals), decline of populations, disruption of ecological systems containing animals, and extinction of species. They also vary in features relevant to moral evaluation and decision-making; these include the number of animals affected, the duration of the effects, the likelihood of irreversible effects, and the degree to which the effects can be controlled. In some cases human actions can also provide benefits to animals such as shelter and health care. Four mid-level principles are proposed to make a plausible fit to the features of the four types of human activities and to address the major ethical concerns that arise. The principles are: (1) to provide good lives for the animals in our care, (2) to treat suffering with compassion, (3) to be mindful of unseen harm, and (4) to protect the life-sustaining processes and balances of nature. This “practical” approach arguably makes a better fit to the complex, real-life problems of animal ethics than the single foundational principles that have dominated much recent animal ethics philosophy. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9353-z Authors David Fraser, Animal Welfare Program, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4 Canada Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

The Ethics of Care and Empathy. Michael Slote. London and New York, Routledge, 2007. Pp. 152.Hbk. £65.00; Pb. £18.99.

J.G. Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics is seldom read, despite the fact that it remains, after more than two centuries, one of the most original and insightful efforts at a systematic normative ethical theory on Kantian foundations. Part of the reason for its obscurity lies in the perceived implausibility of Fichte’s account of practical deliberation and of the authority of individual conscience. The view typically attributed to Fichte is a conjunction of four claims: that moral deliberation consists entirely (...) in consultation of one’s conscience; that conscience is a faculty that gives immediate epistemic access to substantive moral truths; that conformity with the verdict of conscience is the sole criterion of the moral worth of actions; and that an individual’s conscientious decision is therefore morally incorrigible. This set of views is indeed implausible; but Fichte in fact held none of them. Hegel was the first to attribute them to him and, incredibly, Hegel’s has remained for 200 years the dominant interpretation, even among scholars of Fichte. In this paper I explain how Fichte actually thought about practical deliberation and the role of conscience, and diagnose the sources of appeal of the Hegelian interpretation. (shrink)

In the context of health care system complexity, nurses need responsive leadership and organizational support to maintain intrinsic motivation, moral sensitivity and a caring stance in the delivery of patient care. The current complexity of nurses’ work environment promotes decreases in work motivation and moral satisfaction, thus creating motivational and ethical dissonance in practice. These and other work-related factors increase emotional stress and burnout for nurses, prompting both new and seasoned nurse professionals to leave their current position, or even the (...) profession. This article presents a theoretical conceptual model for professional nurses to review and make sense of the ethical reasoning skills needed to maintain a caring stance in relation to the competing values that must coexist among nurses, health care administrators, patients and families in the context of the complex health care work environments in which nurses are expected to practice. A model, Nurses’ Ethical Reasoning Skills, is presented as a framework for nurses’ thinking through and problem solving ethical issues in clinical practice in the context of complexity in health care. (shrink)